It’s Not Just for Bears Anymore

To transform a pile of 6″ x 6″ x 8′ yellow pine beams into 10 workbenches, the first step is a chainsaw.

This morning I drove down to Berea, Ky., to help Kelly Mehler and his assistant, Ben, sort through 80 beams and crosscut them to length for the Roubo workbench class I’m teaching there in May.

All the beams were in the rough and when I first put my hands on them, I was a little concerned. They felt wet, like they had just come down river. But I held my tongue because I knew the logs had been outside during a heck-acious storm Sunday.

The first order of business actually was not the chainsaw. We had to sort the yellow pine into three piles: tops, legs and stretchers.

For each component we were looking for different things as we examined the beams.

For the top beams, we were looking for the pith of the tree to be close to an edge. That way we might be able to remove the heart when we surfaced the beams down to 5″ square (lucky for us the beams are actually 6-3/8″ square).

And if we cannot remove the heart, we can relieve it. Once we get all the top beams surfaced, the last step will be to saw a kerf through the heart (on the underside of the top) to give the annular rings a place to move. I’ll discuss this process more in a future post.

For the stretchers, we were looking for beams where the heart was in the center. These boards will be resawn into planks that are about 2″ thick, so we’ll be able to remove the heart entirely.

And for the legs, we were looking for short, clear sections of wood so they would look good.

Then we fired up the chainsaw. Cue the movie!

The whole process, from gabbing to good-byes, took about three hours.

As I left, Kelly went to fetch his moisture meter. The news: even on the inside of these beams, the wood is about 15 to 20 percent moisture content. Once he gets them stickered inside, the moisture content will drop rapidly.

Both classes are fun (for me, at least). I think we’re building the English layout square in the handplane class, so we’re going to cover a broad range of tools and skills there.

The funny this is that every class involves planes, saws and chisels because they all work together. And all the classes involve learning how to deal with stock from a hand-tool perspective, which is different than a power-tool approach.

I guess I’m saying they are the same class, but one emphasizes saws and the other planes.

It is fortunate you found those timbers with a low moisture content. It is very common they will be in excess of 30%. I am a bit shocked that your dealer sold them to you with pith still in place. It makes me wonder what they were originally intended for when sawn out of the tree. Maybe you just saved this lovely wood from being a lowly fence post and elevated it to Roubo wonderfulness. So by “helping” I hope you did more than just film Kelly at work.

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